The two boxes of eye-catching gold bars were flowing with a faint golden light. They were taken out one by one. The crisp sound of the gold bars knocking against the table was unforgettable. The pure gold bars were like a group of pure and beautiful young girls wearing sexy bikinis, lying on the beach and basking in the sun. It was simply seductive.
The total value of the silver coins and gold bars was something that it would take a lot of effort to figure out. However, after comparing it with the Dutch account book, everyone could quickly come up with an estimate. The total value of the precious metals stored in the vault was converted to 300,000 taels of Ming silver, or even more.
This was 300,000 taels!
A Ming Dynasty soldier on paper. The annual salary was only 18 taels. 300,000 taels was enough to pay more than 10,000 people for a year. Not to mention that most of the generals and officers drank the blood of the soldiers and ate empty salaries. 300,000 taels of military expenditure could last longer than expected.
A 100 to 200 ton Fu ship cost 800 taels. If 300,000 taels were invested in naval construction, combined with the historical research results of sailing warships, the optimal warship structure could be directly pointed out. It would be easy to create a fleet that could stand above the others.
However, what the transmigration group was worried about was the revenge of the " Roc ".
According to the captives 'confessions, a few ships that were heading to Japan for trade had not yet returned to port. In a few days, these " fish that slipped through the net " would find that the high-ranking officials had changed hands. After they spent a month to return to Batavia, the company's parliament members would hold a meeting, and the soldiers and warships would take some time to gather. It would probably be more than three months before they led the fleet north to Tainan.
If they encountered storms and pirates again, their arrival would be delayed by another month.
In layman's terms, before the arrival of 1630, the transmigration group had at least three months to prepare.
It was too late to build warships. Not to mention that the transmigration group did not have enough skilled shipbuilders, even if they had enough skilled workers, they would not be able to mass-produce sailing warships like in the industrial era.
A sailboat of one to two hundred tons would require one to two months of labor, while a ship of more than three hundred tons would require half a year. By the time the self-produced warship was launched, the enemy would have already led the army to face them.
Therefore, the method of building ships to fight the enemy was not very good. They could only build forts to defend themselves.
As the name suggested, a fort needed a cannon and a platform for firing.
Although the Transdimensional Group adhered to the concept of economy, they could completely remove all the Dutch cannons from the armed merchant ship and fix them on the turret. This was much faster and cheaper. In less than a day, they could install more than ten 12-pound cannons on the turret.
However, Wang Kaizhi didn't think so. As a transmigrator, he knew very well that if a force couldn't even be self-sufficient in firearms, it could only be considered a barbaric tribe. It was like a large country with a large population in South Asia. Its self-made planes were built every year, but they crashed every year. You could say that it was a large industrial country, but its advanced weapons were basically imported.
If another country imposed an arms ban on it, it wouldn't even be able to deal with the neighboring country.
Therefore, although the domestication of weapons was a painful, long, and high-investment hard work, Wang Kaizhi had to do it. Without independent research and development of domestic technology, there would be no future for Australia and Song!
Therefore, under Li Zhuxi's orders, the vigorous cannon casting movement began.
As a transmigrator, Wang Kaizhi had an unparalleled advantage over any male protagonist who wore a single outfit.
He could search for information online at any time.
Obviously, the reason why the transmigrators were more knowledgeable than the ancients in certain aspects was precisely because the transmigrators were: Standing on the shoulders of a scientific giant, being able to be hundreds of years ahead of others from the beginning.
Since the birth of the flintlock and cannon, both the East and the West had had countless experiences and lessons in casting cannons. Wang Kaizhi could completely ignore his previous failures and start running directly at the finish line.
The clay mold cannon method was a simple method that took a long time and had a high rate of failure, so Wang Kaizhi abandoned it.
With the manpower, material resources, and financial resources he currently possessed, choosing the " Iron Casting Cannon Method " of the mid-19th century was the most cost-effective choice.
Gong Zhenlin was the inventor of the domestic iron casting cannon. It was not an exaggeration to say that he was thirty years ahead of the western world.
The iron mold casting method used iron to make a hard mold. When casting the cannon, the inner side of the iron mold was brushed with a special paste, then tightened with an iron hoop, heated up, and finally poured with metal solution.
After the metal liquid cooled down and took shape, it was like peeling off a bamboo shoot shell, gradually exposing the cannon body. Finally, the mud embryo in the cannon core was removed, and the interior of the cannon bore was extremely smooth.
Compared to the traditional clay mold cannon method, the iron mold cannon method had a smooth surface, unlike the clay mold method, which would produce a large number of air bubbles. These air bubbles would reduce the quality of the cannon and make it easy for the chamber to explode.
Moreover, the iron mold cannon did not need to wait for the clay mold to dry, and it was not affected by the weather. The casting time was also very fast, and the casting cycle was less than ten days.
In addition, the iron mold could be mass produced when casting cannons, which could reduce the cost and facilitate standardized production.
The appearance and quality of the cannon were almost identical, which made it very convenient for the cannon to be loaded with ammunition.
At this time, Da Ming's artillery logistics suffered from the confusion of parameters and the lack of unified standards.
There were very few standardized cannonballs. The size of the cannonballs varied, and there were even cannonballs that were not round. While they damaged the barrel, they did not have much power.
The gunpowder was not loaded in a fixed ammunition bag. It was based on the gunner's personal experience. He could load as much as he wanted. When the battle was intense, he would load the gunpowder crazily, which would often cause the cannon to explode. As a result, the gunner would only dare to load less gunpowder, and the range and power of the cannon would be greatly affected.
However, there was a huge flaw in casting iron cannons. Because the cooling time of the cannon's outer layer was too short and the cooling time of the cannon core was too slow, the quality of the cannon was too hard and brittle. Its lifespan was greatly reduced. It could even be deformed and crack, affecting the cannon's combat performance.
This meant that the cannon made by the iron casting method could only be a small-caliber cannon, and the cannon wall had to be thickened. For example, a 6-pound cannon or a 12-pound field cannon. To improve the quality and performance of the cannon and extend its service life, it would have to rely on another person's cannon casting technology.
It was the hollow cannon craft of Thomas Rodman, a major in the US Army in the mid-19th century.
In layman's terms, the water-cooling technology in the cannon core allowed the slow-cooling cannon core to cool down and condense into steel first, while the outer layer of molten metal cooled down slowly. Due to the principle of thermal expansion and contraction, the cooled outer layer would tightly grip the cannon core, as if there was a big hand holding the cannon at all times, giving it an inward force.
This inward force allowed the cannon to withstand greater chamber pressure, which greatly extended the lifespan of the cannon. This type of cannon was lighter than other clay mold cannons and was more suitable for infantry mobile combat.
Even if they copied the historical answers, the transmigration group still had to use resources and time to continuously try and make mistakes in order to reach the technical parameters in the historical data.
After a period of hard work, the transmigration group finally created their own cannons.
Three six-pound cannons.
It was time to test the cannon.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]